The Ties That Bind

Texas Highway 69 between Colmensneil and Zavalla

I always get a feeling of warmth and comfort when I'm in Deep East Texas. Just the drive there is beautiful. I was born and raised there, it is where I where my heart is. When I proudly say to people that I'm from Jasper, Texas, they can't understand how I can have these emotional ties to a place with such a brutal history. The scars from the James Byrd slaying are so deep that our little jewel in the forest might never heal completely. I am not so jaded as to think that Jasper and surrounding counties in East Texas were ever perfect places, they are not. We live in the South. The Deep South. We deal with racial incidences and prejudices. We challenged each other's actions and positions when we have to. And we compromise when we can. But, what we Southerners are good at is finding that one thing most of us can agree on. That one thing might be different in every situation. For me, it might be the beauty of our deep, dark, mysterious forests, the peacefulness of  the slow flowing rivers, or the tranquility of the deep blue lakes.

But, then there are the country churches. They touch something so deep inside of me that I can hardly express it. My family and I recently attended the funeral of a dear friend in Tyler County. The funeral, was a beautiful and touching. The burial took place at a country church, on a gravel road, in a pine forest. The church was so beautiful in it's simplicity that it took my breath away. Even my thirteen year old grandson was taken aback and asked to have his picture taken in front of it. How many pleas to God? How many amens? How many "Amazing Graces"? Only God knows. I am not a particularly religious person, but these country churches transport me back to another time and place. I can almost hear the cadence in the preacher's voice, hear the choir singing, and see the church ladies swaying and fanning themselves. When all was said and done the entire congregation would hold hands and singing "Blessed be the ties that bind our hearts in Christian love and fellowship". And in unison they all would say. "Ahhhhhmen".

A Bowl Of Red

Ora Dee Hadnot Beatty
1919-1967

My maternal grandmother’s name was Ora Dee. This is the South though, so everyone made her first and middle names sound like one word, "Oardee". She was born in the Bevil Port community of Jasper County, Texas in December 1919. My siblings and I called her Aunt Dee. My mother was born four months before her fourteenth birthday. They were raised like sisters. I guess I always knew it, but research and DNA has confirmed that she and my fraternal great-grandmother, R. V. Seale, were half first cousins. Complicated, I know, but not unusual in small close knit communities.

Although she died when I was only twelve years old, I remember her as one of the hardest working women I've known. She cleaned houses and took care of other people's children by day, and at night she was a cigarette smoking, gum chewing cafe cook. She worked at a small cafe across the street from the Jasper County jail. The Wedge Inn Cafe was famous for it's chili, and Ora Dee was the one who made it. People would come in and order a bowl of red. I thought that was funny when I was a kid. My grandfather, Alonzo Jordan, would order a bowl of red and a glass of white. That meant he wanted a glass of milk with his chili. No one ever really knew her recipe. I don't think there was one. She had made that chili hundreds of times, so she knew what it was suppose to taste like. I think she added a pinch of this and a dash of that until it was what she wanted it to be. A high school friend of mine recently gave me a recipe that she said was the Wedge Inn chili recipe. She said it came from the family that owned the place. I tried it. My taste buds have evolved since I was twelve years old, but I don't think that recipe included all of Ora Dee's ingredients. 

Wedge Inn Cafe
Jasper, Texas

One morning in May of 1967 she didn't feel well after her night shift at the cafe. She felt bad enough that she decided to see a doctor. That in itself was saying something. We were country folk who only saw a doctor for life threatening injuries or ailments that had been unsuccessfully treated with home remedies. She had to enter through the back door, of course. After all, it was 1967. She had to wait in the "Colored" waiting room. She probably knew she'd have to wait until the White patients had been seen before they even asked what was ailing her. So she sat her tired body in the hard uncomfortable chair in the Colored section. She fell asleep. When they finally got around to calling her name she did not respond. My forty seven year old grandmother had died. Her death certificate says it was a heart attack. I think she was just too tired to carry on.

I wish I could remember more details of her life, but like most kids I wasn't paying attention to what adults were saying and doing. For some reason, though, I remember her pocketbook (purse) smelling of chewing gum and cigarettes. She always had Alka-seltzer on hand, and she walked almost every where she went. She liked watching sports and she loved to fish. I remember her having a slight cough sometimes. I know now that cough was probably from the cigarettes. She also may have been a little claustrophobic. She liked to sleep near a window, preferably one that was open. Oh, how I wish I remembered more.

I'm still trying to make the perfect bowl of red. Sometimes I feel like I'm close, at other times I think I need a pinch of this or a dash of that. 

Warm Sunday Afternoons and Aunt Jewel's Ice Cream

Jewel Seale Verrett (1905-1969)

I didn't know my 2nd great-aunt Jewel Seale Verrett  (my grandmother's aunt) very well. She was already an old woman when I was a little girl. The only thing I really cared to know about was that she sold scoops of sweet delicious ice cream to us after church. I'm sure she knew that those nickles she collected for those ice cream cones were meant for the church collection plate, but she took them anyway. Even though her house was only a stone's throw from Dixie Missionary Baptist Church, I don't remember her attending Sunday services. Her little house wasn't much to look at, but I was always fascinated by the little details it held. First of all, we had to climb over a fence to get into her yard. Well, we didn't actually climb, a set of steps had been built over the fence. So, we walked over the fence. The rooms inside the house were small and crowded with all matter of things. Some were interesting, other seemed a little scary to me. The walls were not covered with drywall or wood paneling. The studs were exposed and covered with wallpaper. There were pictures of people sitting erect and unsmiling staring at us. An odd wooden shelf built to fit perfectly in the corner of the room was filled with knick-knacks that look so delicate and were placed so precariously that the vibrations from a slammed door might cause them to crash to the floor.

I could tell that Aunt Jewel must have been a beautiful woman in her younger years. Even in her old age her caramel colored skin was firm and smooth. If I remember correctly, she had a few freckles sprinkled on each cheek and across her nose.

Aunt Jewel with her husband, Richard "Skitter" Verrett behind her

Her hair, although almost completely gray, was always swept up and neatly styled on top of her head. A homemade apron usually hid most of the front of her print house dresses, but from behind even a child could see that her figure had once been stunning.

She was intriguing to me. I wanted to ask about the people in the photographs on her walls. Were they her children? Had those knick-knacks been gifts from relatives in far away places? I wondered. But I was a child and I was to be seen and not heard.

When going through some of my grandmother's things, I found these pictures of Aunt Jewel. I was immediately transported back to dusty dirt roads, warm Sunday afternoons, girls in white dresses, and Aunt Jewel's ice cream.

Girls In White Dresses

Easter reminds me of little girls is white organza dresses gloves, patent leather Mary Jane shoes, and lace trimmed socks. And then the drive down a dusty red dirt road to a little white, wood framed church.

Afterwards we would hurry to finish the wonderful dinner my mother had made waiting for us. All we could think about was the pineapple or coconut cake mama had sitting on the kitchen counter. But every crumb on our plates had to be gone before we could taste its sweet deliciousness.
In my memory the day was always bright and sunny, not a cloud in the sky... just happy kids chasing butterflies. When the memories were good, they were very good. I miss those times.

Aunt Marie

This is my husband’s aunt Marie Moye.

Marie began working at the TCH (Tyler County Hospital) in 1954 as a maid scrubbing floors, cleaning bed pans, then promoted to the kitchen. It was hard work.

Just as racial integration came to southeast Texas, Iona Conner encouraged Marie to enter Lamar University’s (Beaumont, Texas) nursing program. Marie reflected, “Mrs. Conner said ‘They are letting Black people go.’ She said she would bring the application.”

Among the first five black women to enter Lamar’s nursing program, Marie was the only one to stay. The racial hatred drove the other four away.

Several parents of Lamar students threatened Marie, and one day they forced her to leave town.  Marie had to park off campus, where a police officer would be waiting, and then escort her to school. Another would escort her out every day. When she graduated from Lamar in 1957, the school administrators did not even put a date on her diploma. She was the first African American nursing graduate from Lamar.

Marie became the TCH’s first African American nurse in 1958. “It was still hard,” Marie said, “we had to say ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs.’ to every white person, no matter how old they were. Even to a baby and a little child. I could not eat until everyone else had left the dining room. Also, the white nurses would go and sit down, often, and I had to mop the floor.”

“For 35 years, I was a midwife. I saw the second generation come, delivering the baby of a mother I had delivered. Some say the count was over 2,000 babies.”

“One time in Spurger, way back in the woods, a couple had no money at all. The new father went to the neighbor’s garden and got some tomatoes out of the garden. Then out of his deep freeze, he got some string green beans. Got some green beans and tomatoes for delivering a baby.”

“Black or white ... so many were so poor. They needed someone to help them get that baby into world."

PreciousHeart
www.preciousheart.net/message/2012-Moye.pdf

Naomi Frazier Smith

Naomi Smith, wife of Sidney Smith, a city mail carrier, was stabbed to death on Thursday at her home, at 3417 South Race Street. Ogden Weaver, a roomer at the Smith home, is being held in the Grant county jail on charges of murder in connection with the death.

Surviving Mrs. Smith are her husband, and two children, Joan, age 5, and Roger, age 3. Mrs. Smith was a former beauty parlor employee.

Leader-Tribune (Marion, IN) Friday, 4 Mar 1932 Pg.5 Col.5

Thelma and Opal

Opal and Thelma Frazier's senior pictures

They were double cousins. Their fathers, Chelise and William Frazier, were brothers and their mothers, Emma and Annie Weaver, were sisters. 

Born four months apart in Grant County, Indiana, Thelma and Opal undoubtedly grew up together. Thelma, the eldest, was born October 1904, and Opal was born January 1905. In 1923 Thelma was not only in high school, but also working as a bookkeeper while living with her Uncle Chelise and Aunt Emma.

Marion High School in Marion, Indiana in 1923.

Thelma went on to become a school teacher in Jefferonville, Indiana, but her health soon failed and she returned home to Marion where she died on March 15, 1937.

Opal married Donald Burnett Winslow and by 1931 she was working as a maid. The marriage ended in divorce and Opal reclaimed her maiden name. She died in her home town of Marion, Indiana in 1970. Opal had two sisters, Naomi and Ruth. She and Ruth share a headstone at the Estates of Serenity Cemetery where Thelma is also buried.

Papoo

This is my grandfather. We called him Papoo. People who know my family will say he wasn't really my grandfather. As far as bloodlines go, they're right, he wasn't. He married my grandmother in 1939 and accepted my then 6 year-old father as his own. He was the only grandfather I knew. He was kind and forgiving, generous and understanding, patient and loving. He never raised his voice or his hand. He didn't have to. Whether you were in his Sunday school class, in his barber chair, having him take your picture, or sitting quietly in the coolness or his darkroom watching images appear like magic, you HAD to listen when he spoke. Not because he demanded your attention, but because he didn't speak too often or too loudly. He listened. And when he chose to speak you knew he had something to say, something you didn't want to miss.

When I was in high school he would pick me up every day and drive me across town to my after school job. When I got into the car he would say, "How's your day going, baby?" And then we would sit quietly and listen to Paul Harvey for the rest of our short trip. I think that's why I'm such a news nerd now. The point being, he never said that dress is too short (and it probably was), or what have you done to your hair, or did you pass that test, or I have so many other things I could be doing right now (and he probably did). When I got out of the car he would say, "Have a good evening, baby. I'll see you tomorrow." Whatever my day had been up to that moment or would become later, I looked forward to those kind caring words and our few quiet minutes together. I miss his gentle reassuring presence.

International Center Of Photography
New York Times
Jasper, Texas: The Community Photographs of Alonzo Jordan